Jaywalker

CTH is a trivial nothing compared to the fact that certain actions are now about explicit skills/abilities and not about AP management, and the ridiculous "conservation of ninjutsu" going on with automatic weapons. It'd be okay if the skills were "one per merc, it makes them special" the way Shadow had his permanent Camo in the original, but everyone having access to several doesn't exactly work very well with the "authentic" (it's not realistic, but it feels like it could be) feeling of combat in JA2.

It would have been more true to people's expectations if the experiment went in the direction of Phoenix Point though, at least in terms of gunplay (layered destructible terrain, actual shot simulation, limb damage, etc.).

By the looks of it so far "Realism" is something that'll need to be modded in, to the extent possible.

Curious you'd say that, after accusing everyone of being sock-puppets not more than a few days ago.

If a game announces mod support, expect this to be someone's comment about literally everything, and also for it to actually be done and a genuine improvement.

This has always been a problem with the mercs: they might have traits you don't want or even none at all. It probably could have been handled better, e.g.: by reinventing the attributes a bit more instead, but it's not exactly a deal breaker if they can account for this in the pricing or at least make the presets reasonable for what the merc is known for.

Read what you just wrote, with comprehension this time. Your decision making in the 1.13 LBE system is not what to bring with you, but what packs to put it in. Different types of pockets, different arrangements of pocket types, but none of this is a limitation on what you can bring into combat with you, because you always have enough pockets for everything from the moment you unlock the relevant gear in Bobby Ray's, it's only a matter of waiting for shipping and going through the bussywork. For all practical purposes, with how simple in terms of what you can do in a turn JA2 is, all you need is the ammo for the gun in your hands, grenades if you need any, medkits if you can use them, and possibly ammo for your backup weapon. You will NEVER find yourself starved for slots that items that are actually used in combat go into, unless you remove all of the LBE gear, or simply buy the wrong one.

You are literally making no meaningful choices. it's only down to the flavor if your grenades and mags end up in the vest or on one of the thighs, you still get grenades and ammo. A meaningful choice is something like the limited Quickslots from Wasteland 3 or JA:Flashback, in those cases you have to make a choice that actually matters: WHAT do you bring to battle with you, not HOW. Vanilla JA2 already has that choice in the form of a weight limit, 1.13 only adds layers of obfuscation to it.

Nothing about the LBE system in 1.13 is "exciting" it's pointless busywork handled mostly through Bobby Ray's purchases, which adds nothing to the overall gameplay. You don't make any interesting choices, you just have to do a lot more clicking to end up with the same exact result a simpler system would produce: your soldiers being able to carry the gear you want them to use. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter if you are carrying 8 grenades in 8 grenade pouches or in 4 "small item" slots, you are still carrying 8 grenades, you just had to fiddle for 20 minutes to end up with those grenades assigned to the correct pockets.

A "lightly armed" unit usually does not carry with it any support weapons such as mortars of SAW's, in favor of the cheaper and more versatile "small arms" such as Assault Rifles and SMGs/PDWs. This type of loadout is typically employed by recon and patrol teams, or when limited supplies prevent a team that needs heavy equipment from receiving it. For a fan of a military tactics game, you have a remarkably poor grasp of logistics.

"Obtuse" would be a better word I'd say. 1.13 LBE was done asking the question "can we do this", without giving a second thought to the issue of "should we do this", and on top of that you need to be intimately familiar with which category an item fits into to just buy the right pockets for it. Then because of the poor descriptions you need to also be familiar with the different attachment systems and manufacturers to know which items are compatible, and do the pocket size math to figure out how you can pair them up. It is only barely salvaged by there being some ready-made rigs you can get and be sort-of-okay until a specialist needs their 40mm grenade pouches to also accommodate a med-kit and a gas mask.

He always had a wisdom of 62, and he's not an idiot (at least in JA2) he just has a poor grasp of spoken English.

Overwatch instead of interrupt is the biggest deal breaker for me. I can live with abstraction, it's how turning life into gameplay works, but it's a massive step back in terms of mechanical depth to just explicitly mark an area for execution when something moves, instead of having the merc's experience and the type of action the enemy is taking determine the outcome. Overwatch over interrupt spits in the face of "chaos" that the lack of CTH is supposedly meant to create.

TBH, this poll is missing the absolute best solution: JA: Flashback Flashback had a good compromise where it wasn't the LBE porn of 1.13, but there was still merit to different types of armor/clothing based on the number of "quickslots" they unlocked for your character to access grenades and med-kits during combat (and while individual mags were absent, everyone still had to carry their personal share of ammo).

Buns and whoever will agree to work with her. 😂

The only one that was "excentric" in his wardrobe, was Nails with his leather jacket, which even had gameplay implications.

This is something I feel hits the nail on the head: for whatever of it there was, the personality of a mercenary in JA1 and JA2 came from the "inside", and what we see in JA3 so far is much more surface level. By technical necessity, everyone in JA1 and 2 wore the same practical t-shirt and jeans combo, with the big guys opting for a tank-top instead. This was to some extent reflected in their portraits, they were all ID photos with no headgear no stupid smirks and no accessories. They still spouted the same quirky nonsense in combat, but they LOOKED the part of a professional mercenary, and they didn't interject with literal memes. Steroid had a poor grasp of English, he was a bit sexist at times, but he wasn't reminding you he's a bodybuilder at every step of the way.

The most replayed portion of the most viewed copy of the very first trailer of XCOM2, is the moment a Viper enemy is revealed: XCOM2 was a competent game that in many ways improved over the original, but what sold copies was the sex-appeal of it's visual design, the most advertised feature was the full customization of your soldiers (the second was the gameplay addition of a stealth phase) and the longevity was based entirely on mod support (to this day, new outfits and classes are being released by modders, including playable snake titties long before Chimera Squad). They absolutely would not. The kind of person that downloaded "Long War" wasn't the person that buys a new game, it was the kind of person that keeps playing an old one. Money is made with new purchases, having long legs is what builds a good reputation to sell more fresh copies next time. When XCOM3 inevitably comes around, it won't be marketed as more elaborate or complex mechanically, it'll be advertised with a fresh new coat of paint and a gimmick. If you want to see what happens when a game has mechanical depth, look at Phoenix Point: while successful to some extent it has weaker reviews, and fewer sales. Even though I'd consider the gameplay superior (you should try it if you haven't, it is WILD fun shooting off limbs of the enemies for the first dozen-or-so hours), it does eventually turn into a slog to micromanage every mag of ammo, or shoot the same few types of enemies with basic gunfire, and the game has absolutely none of the visual appeal that gets a casual person interested.

I can absolutely confirm that this statement is bull-, because what sold XCOM was the legacy of the series, and what made XCOM2 a stunning success was the premise of "customize everything" (and snake titties). JA3 is in many ways capitalizing on the same vectors of success: it promises you a modernized gameplay with a focus on the characters and mod support (sadly no snake titties). It is only if you expected a hardcore mil-sim (which none of the previous games was) that you will be disappointed. No matter what a vocal minority might say, 1.13 is not what Jagged Alliance is about as a franchise, it's LBE porn (not a suitable replacement for snake titties).

Surrendering in JA2 is there for a very specific event to be able to later to occur, which is why it only happens if you have no more than 2 people left on your team. 1.13 let's you also negotiate an enemy surrender as part of it's own elaborate prisoner mechanic, but that's a mod and realistically it's more hassle than it's worth (except for when it skips you another tedious hunt for the last 2 guys). I'm almost certain JA3 will have at least one scripted diplomacy event, because we already saw that there is ways to talk yourself out or into a fight even very early on. While we will be taking over the country town by town it will, by technical necessity of the game being an RPG first, most likely follow the format it does in Wasteland 3, with the occasional "repopulation" event when our militia fails to defend a sector or we fight a patrol on the road.

Kinda sad that those AI portraits look better than whatever happened to Buns or M.D.

Well, that's down to "why?" they'd offer you a surrender at all. I'm sure there will be some opportunity for negotiation as part of a scripted event, but I can't really see fanatics negotiating at all, there doesn't seem to be any way for them to retreat either, given the mechanics (it's an RPG, the fights so far seem to take place at fixed points on the map, not a random place they happened to spawn).

What's that supposed to mean? Should it be called "Jagged Adventure" instead? Or is it not worthy having a "3" at the end, and should be considered a spin-off? Sure, it's a lot more Wasteland 4 than Jagged Alliance 2+1, but honestly that's mostly down to the fact that many people are expecting a sequel to 1.13, and not the actual game that mod was for. After over 20 years, there will by necessity be some soul searching and reinventing. What worked to create a cult classic in 1999 is not going to go well with the broader audiences of 2023. Would the game be better if it had some more simulation and management aspects? Maybe. But the direction they went for was to emphasize the unique "40+ protagonists" aspect that is equally part of the franchise.

CTH is not a key feature, it's just a numerical display of success probability for whatever method of abstraction the designers chose for the game to have. You don't have CTH for attacks that don't target a unit directly, you don't get CTH in games where the ballistics are simulated instead of pre-calculated, and you don't get CTH where information obfuscation is part of the risk-management. This isn't the first time, it's basically a legacy for vanilla JA2 players, it shouldn't be a big deal.

The correct way to handle balistics would have been the way Phoenix Point did it: there is no CTH, because there is no CTH calculation. In Phoenix Point, when you fire your weapon, you fire it randomly within a certain cone that represents the potential spread resulting from the accuracy of the weapon being used and the accuracy of the shooter. Weapons of different classes have different damage values, and there isn't a single/auto setting, if you fire an AR or SMG, it's a burst of 4-6 shots, if you fire a rifle or a handgun it's 1 shot. The damage model is also designed to support this design, and you can even add aiming levels via modding.